First Lady Hype Can Be Offensive

Press coverage of Michelle Obama has been all over the map, and not all for the good.

A year ago she was being called an angry, black woman. After the inauguration we were saturated with debate over her body parts (here and here). On the eve of her trip to London, a talk radio host called Mrs. Obama “trash” and Townhall.com referred to her as a female dog. The b-word has since been removed from its web site.

In the past week, television seemed to fixate on an intimate moment Mrs. Obama shared with the Queen of England.

Heavens to Betsy! It’s not like we’re on the verge of a global economic collapse or anything, right?

Polls suggest that Michelle Obama is more popular than her husband.

She has even managed to win over some Republicans who, just a couple of months ago, would have had her stay behind in Chicago rather than move to Washington.

Once written off as a radical, if the reports are to be believed, Mrs. Obama is now the new Jackie O. But all I see when I look at her is my mother, cousins and friends. (They really mean Jackie Kennedy, anyway. The O-part came later.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Mrs. Obama is showing the world — including many Americans — the real face of the average black American woman: Beautiful, strong, warm, nurturing, even likeable.

But many African-American women, including this one, view all the attention — even the seemingly benign kind — as bordering on patronizing and, at times, offensive.

Reality check: About 2.3 million black women 25 years and older in the U.S. hold baccalaureate degrees or better, and 68 percent of them work full-time. They also work in higher numbers than white women in the U.S, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

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